We have a two party system in our country: us vs Them

About 60 people showed up at our house for a party this weekend. In the early afternoon we set a trail from nearby Limona Park that looped around to come in behind the house and end in my driveway. The trail was long enough and fortunately no one got stung when I have looped a portion a little too close to a local bee farm, but the pack was kept pretty close together. The after-trail party was essentially for the birthday of Kiddie as well as Kristen. I set up some work lights in the wooded area behind the house for some back lighting that ended up looking great. Besides having the daiquiri machine churning out frozen concoctions all night, the kegerator was cold and full, the fire pit was roasting, and the weather was perfect. It was just cool enough to not require kicking in one of the AC units and just nice enough that the small fire provided a nice sitting area outside. Kiddie and Mams picked up some pulled pork, rice, and a few other things while Kristen put in a lot of time making the cheesecakes and they went over incredibly well with the friends. While I'm not sure if I can afford to have this kind of event too often, it was nice to bring together a lot of friends from around the state that I hadn't seen in a while. Several of the folks were good at helping keep the place clean, of which I was quite thankful. It had been a long week with a lot of projects with which I was dealing at the office; so the rest Sunday was quite nice.

What's shorter than a weekend? A Vacation!

Kristen's birthday is Monday, so we did some early celebrating and activities and had a pretty packed and complete weekend. On top of a birthday, just accepted a great job offer at Media General at a pretty good position which will involve a lot of work, however it'll be an incredible platform to learn and blossom. Friday I met her at work and walked through downtown to the Channelside area to have dinner with the family at Tina Tapas. After dinner, we all attended the Trans-Siberia Orchestra concert at the Tampa Forum nearby. I've always intended to see them throughout the years but never got around to actually going and was thankful for the opportunity. They are most famous for their holiday albums, especially their rendition of 'Carol of the Bells' that tends to get hourly play on most stations the week of Christmas. It was a fairly long concert with the first half dedicated to a Christmas story and associated songs with the second half involving other works that have their same flair for production and 80's style arena rock. I was especially looking forward to their performance of Carl Orff's 'O Fortuna' as they have yet release that album. Carmina Burana is my absolute favorite musical composition and this song is recognizable in a dozen movie musical scores over the decade, especially any scene involving knights riding off into battle against evil.

Saturday involved an early wake-up to pack gear and food for a morning drive to Jupiter, on Florida's east coast, for a couple of dives. I hadn't been in the water since the Australia trip in March and Kristen hadn't been in a couple of years. I spent part of Friday getting gear together and repaired and picked up a saltwater fishing license so we could go lobster hunting. The seas were a tad rough, however the dives themselves were fairly nice and it was good to get back into it again and felt as easy and comfortable as if we had been diving last week. Being typical east coast diving, we saw a nurse shark within a minute of hitting the bottom as well as turtles, spotted and green moray eels, and the usual assortment of fish. I was able to capture one small Spanish lobster, though 3 others go away. Mid-way through the second dive, I started hearing a hissing from the first stage behind my head and felt back to find quite a bit of air escaping from my high pressure hose. Apparently the hose was starting to split and was gradually getting worse. I took off the gear to look at it, probably freaking Kristen out a bit in the process since we were at 75 feet and still swimming with the current, and after inspection figured I would not be able to fix it. So I would not have to cut the dive short, and thus be cold, queasy and bored sitting on the boat, I just put my gear back on and spent the rest of the dive reaching back and turning on the tank just enough to pressurize the regulator to get a breath before turning it off to exhale. At first Kristen was right there with her alternate ready, but finally figured I must know what I'm doing and thus resumed the dive. Eventually we had to call the dive on NDL time. I was able to have a nice chat on the ride back in with an old dive acquaintance I knew through one of the online diving forums when I had been seriously active on the SCUBA forums and found it nice to hear of the divers still active and some of their recent trips.

On Sunday Kristen went to the football game, though I decided to bow out. I'm really not that into professional football and didn't want her to not enjoy the game and be worried that I was bored, so she hung out with her dad at the stadium for the Bucs vs Vikings game while I spent some time working in the garage and getting some things straightened for the party next weekend. Hopefully I'll have a chance to get the hot tub working and the rest of the yard fixed up before everyone arrives next weekend.

Hot water heater? Why do you need to heat hot water?

After a good bit of research, I finally decided to install a solar water heater in the house. I had started to see signs of the water heater that was already about 20 years old (since they often have a life span of 15-20 years anyway). When I was in Australia last March, I noticed that most of the homes actually had a solar water heating system installed and being in a very sunny area of the country, it makes sense to use it. The local electric company is also looking to increase rates by 20-30% by the beginning of next year. I have 4 adults in my home and figure that heating the water is a fairly significant amount of my bill. A lot of the marketing estimates suggest that

I was fortunate in that even though most of my home is shaded by oak trees, the area directly above the water heater stays sunny most of the day and is already on the south side of the home. I researched many different units such as Fafco, SolaHart (made in Perth, which explains why I saw pretty much only this in Australia), and Guardian. The Fafco unit did not impress me at all since it seemed to be nothing more than the same tubes used for a pool heating system, yet very expensive at and estimate of $5,500. I had liked the SolaHart and the simple thermosiphon system, but being in hurricane prone Florida, I didn't want a unit that required the storage tank to be on the roof; also considering any additional structural support that might be required. It was also pretty expensive with only one local company installing it and at a quoted price of about $6,700. Ouch. One surprising thing was that few of the sales people with whom I spoke really seemed to understand their products and the associated nuances outside of the marketing materials. When I started asking about Btu/ft² and how their product compares to others, they often had no clue as to what I meant, even though all products were rated at the Florida Solar Energy Center.

I did quite a bit of calling around to get prices and found that the fluctuated quite a bit on even the same system, so it really does pay to research options. I settled on getting a Guardian (using a flat plate collector) system installed. Estimates were as high as $5,900 - 5,500, however I was able to find one at $4,500 before finally getting to Advanced Solar Construction at $4,250. There is a federal tax credit for 30% of the installation cost, so after this year taxes are paid, I'd get a credit of $1,275 (lowering the out-of-pocket cost to $2,975). Florida is supposed to have a $500 refund available as well, but apparently the money for the program has been depleted for this year as well as next year, so all I can do is get on the list and hope it is eventually renewed, which would bring my install cost to ~$2,500. Getting a new water heater and installing it would have probably cost me at least $400, so overall my extra cost is about $2100. If I save on average $50 a month in my electric bill (though most marketing materials claim $20 per person per month) at just the current electrical rates, then it would take about 3.5 - 4 years to pay for itself. I tend to try to estimate worst case (part of my general pessimism), so I'm expecting on the outside just about a 5 year return period, but would of course be happy if it was less. Some estimate a 6-9 year return depending on location for soalr heating systems in general, so I'm pretty pleased with my deal. It may seem like a bit of money to spend at first, but right now it is a much better interest/return rate than I could get in any savings account or CD, plus I can feel good about reducing environmental impact. I really wish more people would look at overall cost of operating something other than just the initial purchase price.

On Friday the company came out to do the install. They removed the old 50 gallon water heater, installed a new, special 80 gallon tank, the solar collector on the roof, and did all the plumbing. Getting the large tank in place was a tight squeeze as the closet had just enough space to slide it in with not even an inch on either side to spare. I still have to install my own electrical outlet box to operate the pump since that wasn't part of the contract, but that is simple enough to do anyway. It took three guys most of the day to complete and I was fairly impressed with the work. It'll take a few days before I really learn the system and figure out how beneficial it may be, but so far I am pleased with it. I'm hoping that during the relative hotter months that I may be able to operate the system with the backup electric element completely switched off without any notice.

The ingredients are guaranteed to outlast the packaging.

I was at Costco recently to pick up some stuff and while browsing the aisles saw seemed to be an ironic product. It was labeled as being a plastic package opener and touted the line "Never struggle with plastic packages again!". One would expect that purchasing this product would make opening packages easier, however the item itself is in a hard, clam shell molded plastic package that has no easy means of opening! I think this would definitely be an incongruity between the actual result and the normal or expected result. Amazon announced yesterday a line of 'frustration-free packaging'. Retailers usually demand that manufactures make these large packages for small items (e.g. memory cards, CDs, small electronics) to reduce the ease of shoplifting. Since Amazon.com does not tend to have this kind of a problem and having a fair amount of marketing/retail muscle itself is trying to get manufactures to really reduce the amount of materials needed. Amazon itself has been faulted in the past for using large boxes with a pile of air-filled plastics sacs to ship small items, though in some defense there can be an economical factor regarding stocking only a few standard sizes of boxes whereas multiple sets would increase handling costs to a degree much higher than the postage saved.

Male bonding: Half a dozen guys glued to a TV watching football.

This weekend a couple of friends from California whom I had previously met while on the hash bus tour in Australia came to the Tampa area to visit family this weekend. They couldn't make the has Saturday, which was a shiggy-fest near a local racetrack that most of us never knew existed, but they did come by for a little while on Sunday. Python, Fluffer, and Fluffer's brother picked me up at my house Sunday and we went over to Barnacle's sports bar to watch the last half of the Bucs football game. Barnacle's is locally famous for having over 450 television screens on all the time and most were tuned to the game. The first part was pretty bad I heard with the Bucs down by a significant amount, however in the final quarter they had a huge comeback and ended up winning. I had a great time just chatting away, though Python kept stealing away to feed the lobster catching machine (like what you see in every Wal-Mart, though with stuff animals) though ended up empty handed. After the game we hung out at my place for a while, had a few beers and played some pool while Fluffer's brother played Golden-T on the arcade machine. It was nice to have had a chance to see them again and catch up for a bit, so I'm looking forward to the Inter-Americas event in Colorado next September.